


Sunshine

by heymacareyna



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: Angst, Blood, Character Death, Death, Everyone's dead!, F/M, Gunshot Wounds, Suffering, War, Well not everyone, You Are My Sunshine, dying in your mate's arms, half of everyone. bc their mates are dead.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 22:31:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5392694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heymacareyna/pseuds/heymacareyna





	Sunshine

Black spread over the ravaged Sierra Nevada landscape, lit up sporadically by the flashes of red or yellow that preceded the roar and rumble of an earth-shuddering blow. The enemy spared no one and nothing. Pups, cubs, soldiers, maternals, dominants, submissives… even the leopards’ alpha pair. Which made the SnowDancers feral in protecting their own, both for their own sakes and for the sakes of the DarkRiver souls shattered by the loss.

Drew was heading up Hawke’s protection detail, and Indigo, though part of the offensive not the defensive, was working close by when she felt the bond rip her heart out of her chest. The phantom pain tore through her torso, punched the air from her lungs, drowned her, threw her to her knees. After a quick self-assessment verified that she herself hadn’t been wounded, it took a second for the meaning to register.

And then any breath she’d recovered was sucked out of her.

Without needing to think, she shoved herself back to her feet and ran as she’d never run before, a wolf in all but form, her animal riding her to go faster faster _couldn’t she go any faster?_ Instinct and physiology provided her enough air to run but she couldn’t _breathe._

She blew past someone, maybe Eli, who tried to tell her something but she didn’t wait to hear it—she could smell her mate.

And blood.

So much blood in the air.

_No. No. Please._

The scent grew stronger, and her night-glow eyes snapped to the crumpled form of strong, smart, sweet Andrew Kincaid.

“Drew?” She didn’t realize she was collapsing beside him until her knees slammed into the hard ground. The pain in her chest tightened—and her mate choked, a strangled wet cough that spattered scarlet on his mouth and chest.

A chest already darkened black-red with a torn-open hole that had his stubborn heart working against him, pumping precious blood out onto the dirt.

“He took it for me,” said a familiar voice. Indigo had to focus, but through burning eyes and ravaged heart, she made out the face of Hawke, who had his hands on that gaping hole, trying and failing to stem the overflow.

“Where’s Judd?” she managed. The Tk-Cell had healed his brother-in-law before; he’d do it again in a heartbeat. They just had to tell him. He’d come.

But Hawke inclined his head toward the direction she’d come from. She followed his gaze and saw only a pile of black leather and blood-stained jeans that she’d missed before. He’d stripped? “Why did he—?”

A hand.

One hand, twisted and half-hidden under the back seam of the jacket.

It was then that she realized Judd wasn’t coming. Not this time.

Another wet, hacking cough. Indigo’s attention snapped back to her mate, and she found him looking up at her, lake-blue eyes faded and glazed. “Indy,” he rasped. More splattering red.

Tenderly, her every organ screaming, she wiped the staining liquid from his skin. “I’m here, Drew. I’m here. I love you.” _So much._

His entire body convulsed. She held his head so he wouldn’t hurt himself, though at this point it wouldn’t make much dif—“Oh God.” She felt herself dry-retch in sobs, and hot wetness burned her cheeks.

“Vasic?” she asked Hawke, who shook his head.

“Aden said he’s nowhere,” the alpha said lowly. Nowhere in the PsyNet. Gone. Dead too, most likely.

“Lara. Tamsyn. _Anyone.”_ Her voice cracked in raw desperation. She refused to give up on the man who hadn’t given up on her.

But Hawke only shook his head.

The convulsions passed, and Drew settled, skin wan. Another bloodying coughing fit. She couldn’t stop wiping it away. This couldn’t be the last way she saw him. “Sorry,” he started, “I couldn’t… be more… original.”

Choking on a sobbing snarl, she smoothed his sweat-damp hair from his forehead. _“Original?”_

His hand, pale and trembling, lifted briefly to shake toward his chest. “Bullet. Again.”

And though she hadn’t thought anything could hurt her more than his last gunshot wound, this did. “That’s right,” she managed despite the tear in her heart. Unable to leave him to freeze on the ground, she pulled him into herself, into her lap. “So you have to hold on, okay? It’ll be much more impressive when you die of old age in a century.”

A rasp that might have been a laugh heaved into a gurgling choke. His unfocused eyes skated over her face. “Indy.”

“Drew.” She tried to smile for him, but her facial muscles didn’t work that way. Not now. Maybe never again. “Please, Drew.”

He drew in a long, rattling breath, then used it to whisper, “I love you, Indy.”

Sobbing, she petted his forehead, his cheek, his neck, his arm, anywhere she could find skin-to-skin contact. “I love you too.” And it had taken her so long to realize it that they’d only had a few years together.

He shuddered against her. Something warm and wet soaked through her shirt and dampened her abdomen. Her strokes faltered, but she continued. The reassuring intimacy relaxed him a little, and easing his pain was all she could do.

She leaned over him and opened her mouth, and a whisper of a song left her lips.

“You are my sunshine,” she sang, voice thin and breaking, “my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey.”

A flash of red in the black sky. The tremors of the impact shook the forest.

Blood gurgled too long in Drew’s throat.

“You’ll never know, dear,” Indigo sobbed, “how much I love you.”

Blind eyes stared up at her.

Another unsuccessful heaving cough tried to clear his throat. Air didn’t make it to his lungs.

“Please don’t take…”

The light died in his eyes. The mating bond ripped in half, and Indigo tried to snatch at it, sobbing and desperate to keep part of him with her… but it disintegrated, and she was alone.

“…my sunshine away.”


End file.
